Is Jealousy One of the Emotions that Dogs Experience?

It seems that every year we get more data indicating the similarity between the emotional and mental life of human children and that of dogs. The issue of emotions in dogs is a very controversial one although there is some consensus that the range of emotions experienced by canines is similar to that experienced by human children between the age of two and three years (click here for more on this). However, looking at the available research, except for the issues of anger and aggression, it appears that scientists have not spent a lot of effort studying the emotions in dogs that we tend to consider to be negative or less than desirable. Such issues are important, however scientists, like pet owners, seem to have a bias toward concentrating on topics that might cast their dogs in a positive rather than a negative light.

However some negative emotions are extremely important and are certainly worthy of research. Take the issue of jealousy. In humans this is an important emotion since it has been found to be the third leading cause of non-accidental homicides worldwide. The defining feature for jealousy is a social triangle which arises when there is an important relationship between two individuals and a third individual intervenes to try to co-opt the affections or favors from one of the original pair, thus shutting out the remaining person. Some researchers feel that jealousy is a very primitive emotion which really does not take much deep thought. They believe that jealousy can be triggered by the relatively simple perception that a loved one's attention has been captured by a potential usurper. This seems to be confirmed by the fact that several studies have found that jealousy can appear in human infants as young as six months of age. In these studies the infants showed jealousy when their mothers interacted with what appeared to be another infant (but was actually just a realistic looking doll), but not when the mother interacted with something which was a clearly inanimate object.

Since the mental life of dogs involves emotions which are much more complex than that of a six-month-old child it seems to be sensible to propose that dogs may also feel jealousy. Prior to now there has been only one other study which looked at this issue (click here to read about that), however some scientists feel that that particular piece of research was really looking at the issue of a dog's perception of fairness and that the emotion involved could be envy rather than jealousy. Some new data, however, uses a variation of the same research design that was used to test for jealousy in children and it seems to have come up with an unambiguous answer. This research was done by Christine Harris and Caroline Prouvost of the University of California San Diego and it was published in the journal PLoS ONE*.

The setup of this experiment was quite straightforward and 36 dogs were tested. The jealousy condition involved a realistic looking stuffed mechanical dog that barked and wagged its tail as if it were real dog. The dogs tested in the experiment clearly suspected that the toy might be a real dog since 86% of them sniffed the anal region of this simulated dog during the test or afterwards (in the same way that they might have sniffed at an unfamiliar real dog).

In the jealousy condition the dog's owner interacted with the toy dog as if it were an actual dog by petting it, talking sweetly, and so forth. In another condition the owners engaged in exactly the same behaviors but did so towards something which was obviously not alive (a jack-o'-lantern shaped plastic pail). This was done so that the researchers could see whether it was just the affectionate behaviors being directed something other than the pet dog that was enough to trigger jealous behaviors. Finally in the third condition the owner read aloud from a children's book which had pop-up pages and played melodies. This condition allowed the researchers to test whether the dog's behaviors were really associated with jealousy or was just due to the fact that the owner was no longer paying attention to their pet.

The interactions were videotaped and analyzed later to measure specific signs of jealousy. These signs included aggression, attention seeking, attempts to break up the interaction, and how interest and attention were directed. The results were quite unambiguous. In terms of aggression, one fourth of the dogs snapped at the toy dog when their owner was playing with it. It was clearly a seething aggression caused by the jealousy since after the owner put the toy dog down at the end of the test period, 36% of the dogs snapped at the toy dog when the opportunity arose. Such snapping behavior in the other conditions was confined to just one dog. In terms of attention seeking and disrupting the interaction every single dog pushed at its owner to try to get his or her attention when they were playing with the toy dog and 87% of them pushed at the fake dog. This pushing behavior was extremely rare in the other conditions.

So this data makes it quite clear that dogs do appear to feel jealousy and respond to it in much the same way that human children do. As we learn more about dogs it appears that we are also learning that their mental lives are more complex than we suspected. Not only do dogs feel love (for example click here) but also some not so noble feelings, like jealousy and envy, much the same way that we do. Dogs are not angels, nor are they devils, but rather, like people, they are multifaceted, and like young humans they experience a broad range of positive and negative emotions.

The report of dog jealousy apparently used only certain adverse displays such as air-snapping as diagnostics for canid feelings of jealousy.

In contrast, some dogs (border collies-BCs) reacted constructively to situations potentially provoking adverse display of jealousy or envy. We observed a variety of occasions where a dog reacted to a situation by attempting to duplicate or imitate the actions of children whom the dogs observed getting nice adult attention, while the dog was neglected. For example:

A juvenile dog observed adults paying great attention to a baby who was on the floor playing with many small dressed dolls. The dog was neglected and forbidden to approach the baby. Several hours later the BC was observed creating and then carrying to the adults small objects on which the dog had placed patches of colored fabric or pieces of paper. Several years later that BC occasionally brought such "toys" to adults, apparently for their attention.

The question of whether dogs feel/display emotions such as jealousy and guilt have been hot topics of debate for quite some time, so this study about jealousy is indeed interesting. However, one study just isn't enough to put such debates to rest. I'm open minded, but I still want to see a much larger body studies that show supportive evidence.

Indeed one study certainly isn't enough to put such debates to rest!
Roughly 400 years of relevant observations didn't do the job, so it's probably hopeless to call for more peer reviewed research to deal with a topic where the conflicting views seem to have cult-like persistence. The debate re canine ability to feel/display jealousy and other human-like emotions has continued since before Darwin published in "Descent of Man", 1871, observations affirming animal emotions, and contradicting assertions by Descartes, 1649, that essentially when observing dogs a person needed merely discern the location of the mechanical wind-up key to answer the possibility of dogs experiencing emotions.

Great writeup of this study! I think it's really interesting because society in general always wants to find human-like qualities in dogs and we all get so excited when we see any kind of evidence for it. I feel that we kinda cherrypick the human-like qualities when we're watching dogs and ignore the rest though. For example (from the study):

"86% of [the dogs] sniffed the anal region of this simulated dog during the test or afterwards."

Interesting and impressive statistics. One possibly uncontrolled variable is human reinforcement. Both directly and also in single dogs simply being unfamiliar with their owner's sharing attention with another dog. While this study seems to clearly show the potential, a contrast against multiple-dog households and highly social dogs (dog parks, etc.) could be quite different. Every dog who comes through here for rehabilitation is specifically tested for this, as many potential adopters already have a dog. Very few of them leave with the behavior that they demonstrated in this study. However, I have seen enough examples of people calling with these issues to believe their statistics.

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